


Fright Zone Logs

by orphan_account



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: A LONG while, F/M, Fluffy, an attempt at being fully canon compliant and filling in the gaps between episodes, its been awhile since ive written anything, minimal angst, ongoing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 08:24:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20171179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Entrapta is curious about the huge fright zone lab shes heard about, and its alien occupant. Hordak wants to be left alone, or so he thought for much of his life, but somethings different about this princess.





	Fright Zone Logs

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - HOUR 45:

“All these princesses care about is people who are just like them,”  
Catra twirled her finger in Entrapta’s hair as she spoke in a gentle murmur, “But you’re not like them, are you?”  
Entrapta, mask already flipped down over her face and still not feeling safe, reflexively wrapped her arms around one of her thick twintails as she recovered from the sting of it being pointed out again that she wasn’t like other people. Normal people.  
She retrieved her recorder from a pocket and clicked it on, willing herself into nice, comfortable, emotionally distant analysis mode.  
“Fright zone long hour forty-five. Is that right? I don’t know if that’s right, it was hard to tell in the walls. Hour forty-five, that’s— That’s too many hours. This angry feline person seems to be correct.”  
She flipped her mask up, and stared into an empty space in the air of the cold, dark room where she was being held prisoner.  
“They’re not coming back for me.”  
Tears welled in her eyes, saying it out loud cemented it as reality. She instantly felt foolish for having only just realized it. Of course they’re not coming back for me.  
Catra casually wiped away a tear with a flick of her tail, pulling Entrapta’s attention back to her present company.  
“You wouldn’t have to pretend to be something you’re not with the Horde,” Catra encouraged her, her voice instantly changed from syrupy sympathetic to bolstering.  
“Think of what you could accomplish here. What we could accomplish, together!”  
Scorpia nodded in agreement behind her.

Entrapta stared at the two women standing in front of her, looking to her expectantly.  
“I’ve made more progress on my work in secret here than I did in a whole non-secret life out there!” She unpacked her emotions, quickly shifting to avoid the painful circumstances, and looking on the bright side. Her voice rose in excitement as she spoke.  
“They should see, Horde technology gives me so much to work with. Emily’s the most advanced bot I’ve ever built!”  
“Wait, who’s Emily?” Catra asked.

\-------

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - HOUR 49:

“Fright zone log hour forty-nine. Hmm. Actually, since we know now we’ll be here awhile, let’s make it day three.”  
Still holding the recorder aloft with her hair as her hands worked inside of Emily’s chassis, Entrapta began again.

\-------

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - DAY 3:

“Fright zone log day three!”  
Entrapta said with a big smile into her recorder, her eyes flicking to Scorpia as she finished, who grinned and clapped her claws together excitedly at her new friend. They had mutually decided out from under Catra’s watchful eye that friendship was better than trying to finagle with the prisoner wall rack again.  
“I’m flipping Emily’s LED color to purple,” Entrapta continued into her recorder. ”She deserves to stand out and be herself. Should be a simple procedure, but I’d like to mark the day!” Emily beeped proudly in response, as Entrapta’s thick gloved hands stayed busy reconnecting the proper wires.  
“So you, you built that? I mean, her?” Scorpia asked Entrapta, leaning over her to try and peer into the robot.  
“Well, sort of. I may have borrowed an existing bot that I ran into when I first got here, and maybe slightly pulled out all of its guts and reassembled it more or less from scratch. So, she’s kind of a 2.0 model! With higher processing power, improved air circulation, more lethal laser capabilities, and of course--” she withdrew a hand to give a quick, appreciative rub to the outer shell where the robot’s cheek might’ve been, “more love to give!”  
Emily beeped happily and rolled herself against Entrapta’s palm with a clatter, to a startled noise from the stocky scientist as she quickly withdrew her other hand from inside the bot so it didn’t get caught.  
“Okay girl, now hold still for just a bit longer, I’m almost finished,” she chided gently, and resumed her work when the bot came to a stop.  
“Wow, she really does like you. I could never get a reaction out of these bots. The normal ones at least. They just don’t get my sense of humor.” Scorpia shook her head thoughtfully.  
“I know that feeling.” Entrapta answered without looking up.  
“Hm? Oh yeah, with the whole… princesses thing. Hey, you know, I’m really sorry about that.” Scorpia offered gently, approaching Entrapta from behind with a massive claw outstretched, but not sure where to reassuringly place it without disturbing her work. She put it back at her side for now.  
“Oh, its okay, I think.” Entrapta answered without looking up, her mask still flipped down over her face.  
“I really do think I’m better off here. I’m used to either not having friends or the friends I do have not understanding me. I don’t think the princesses understood me at all. Perfuma put me on a leash.”  
Scorpia winced.  
“Oh, man. That’s bad, right? Context clues are telling me you did not enjoy that. Not that it would be a problem if you did! Different strokes for different folks, know what I’m sayin? I ain’t here to yuck anybody’s yums.”  
Emily’s dingy red-orange lights flickered out and, after a moment, stuttered back on to a warm, intense violet. Entrapta flipped up her mask to look at Scorpia, and offered a smile.  
“Thanks for talking to me, Scorpia.”  
Scorpia smiled back broadly, and outstretched her arms to the smaller woman for a hug.  
“Welcome to the Horde!”

\-------

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - DAY 5:

Entrapta made her way through a dark vent with her long tendrils of hair pulling both her and a few big pieces of sheet metal and bundles of cables and hoses noisily behind her.  
“Ethical dilemma fifty-nine was hardly a dilemma at all, really,” she yelled into her recorder above the clatter. “Nobody will miss some odds and ends around the fright zone. Not when there’s deadly robots to be built!”  
She paused at a T-junction, tapping her chin as she thought. Which way was it back to her room again?  
She found the nearest vent grate and pried it off, and shoved her head upside-down through the opening to get her bearings. She was above an enormous room, dimly lit room, messily lined with tanks of green slime and tubes criss-crossing around the floor and going up into the ceiling. The low hum of servers and power sources rose to meet her, as well as the heat generated by all that machinery going at once. Ah, the giant lab she’d heard about! As she scanned the unfamiliar room, she saw the Fright Zone leader, Hordak, standing at a desk, staring into an array of screens each showing a dense collection of visualized information that he was sifting through carefully, occasionally taking brief notes. She peered down at him curiously.  
She had seen him a few times before, but only briefly. He faced away from her and seemed very focused, but she still took a moment to study him while she had the opportunity.  
She’d been pulled aside by Catra just before her first time meeting him and instructed to not say a word. It seemed serious, Scorpia also seemed to be really scared of him. She wasn’t sure why.  
Her eyes wandered over his cape drawn tight across his broad shoulders, hiding the advanced tech that covered his arms and made up his armor. Ooh what she would give to just get a little peek at that prosthetic! Not to mention the tests she could run on him, he was not like anything she’d ever seen before on this planet. Etheria had a wide range of biodiversity, but most of that stretched into non-sapient, decidedly more animal life.  
Or at least, that’s what she thought before, now challenged by the new and interesting faces she’d seen in the hallways and galley already since getting to the Fright Zone. She then remembered Scorpia, as transparently kind as she was, expressing her own difficulty fitting in with non-arthropodal humans. Entrapta frowned. This really was a place for people who weren’t like anything else on Etheria, wasn’t it? She smiled to herself, decidedly more and more glad she had ended up here with her fellow misfits, despite the sad circumstances.  
After squinting extensively and being sure she absolutely couldn’t read Hordak’s data over his shoulder at this distance, she decided to save the next ethical dilemma for another day and propelled herself back into the vent, replaced the grate, and made her way back to her room with her supplies to start building her next bot. A kid sister for Emily!

\-------

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - DAY 8:

Entrapta sat in her cell-turned-lab hunched over a modified butler model robot, its chassis cracked open and multiple alternate arm apparatuses cannibalized from other, more offensively-capable robots strewn about her desk top. Kyle was here too, for some reason. He didn’t seem to want to be here. Entrapta watched the sandy-haired ferret of a boy stick his finger directly, unhesitantly into the live socket of a different robotics project and yelp in pain, then jam his injury into his mouth to soothe it.  
“Don’t touch that.” Entrapta advised flatly.  
“Well, I know that now!” Kyle argued around his finger and then sat on the floor in a huff with his arms crossed.  
“Why are you here?” she asked, very genuinely.  
Kyle looked up at her like he was ready to cry. But it was hard to tell because he sort of always looked like that.  
“You asked me to be here! You said you needed to test something and then you ignored me for 15 minutes and then watched me burn my finger,” he explained in a huff.  
“Ooohh thats right!” she recalled, “I did ask for a horde cadet to be assigned to assist with experiments today. I forgot you work here. I thought maybe you were just loitering. Do teenagers still do that?”  
“No!” Kyle scoffed loudly in protest, then added sheepishly, “Sometimes.”  
“Well, just wait a sec while I finish this up and then we can start testing.” She reassured him, then turned back to bury herself in the interior of bot #437.  
“What am I helping to test, exactly?” Kyle asked with a gulp as he sized up some of the sharper implements lining Entrapta’s work surface.  
“Functionality,” Entrapta declared matter-of-factly but absolutely uselessly. She bluntly pivoted subjects before he could protest.  
“Have you been in the fright zone awhile? How old are you, 12, 13?”  
“I’m 19!” Kyle shrieked in agony.  
“Oh, excellent. Can you tell me anything about Hordak?” She continued to press him.  
“Uhh, well. He’s the huge scary guy who runs this place. He’s like the president, or the mayor, or uhh. Something like that. I think he might be an alien,” he mused, then added with a definite sadness in his voice, “Do NOT accidentally call him Dad, you’ll never live it down.”  
“Uh-huh, I don’t intend to,” Entrapta said skeptically. “He’s an alien you said? Can you tell me anything else? Where is he from, exactly?”  
“Why do you care?” Kyle answered defensively.  
“Well, both Scorpia and Catra have stressed to me multiple times that I should not go near him, his lab, or,” she paused, “start asking too many questions about him. Ethical dilemma number sixty.” She flowed from one train of thought straight into the other one, one tendril of hair deftly retrieving her recorder from a pocket to speak into, still fiddling with soldering with her hands inside the bot.  
“I’ve already started to ask questions about something I was told to not start asking questions about, but when I asked them I didn’t remember I wasn’t supposed to. So I’m not sure it counts. However, now that I remember, the phrasing was not to start asking questions. Since I’ve already started, is it okay if I merely continue to ask questions? It surely can’t make it any worse, can it?”  
“I dunno,” Kyle answered with a shrug.  
“Hmmm,” Entrapta mused, then spun her chair to face the young recruit, stowing her recorder back in her pocket.  
“I’m interested in his physiology but I was asked keep away from him. So instead, I’m asking you for data to help my research.”  
Kyle looked uncertain.  
“Where is he from? How did he get here? What sort of classification does-- no, does he even fit into Etherian taxonomy? He can’t be mammalian-- Does his blood oxygenate? Ooh, with his skin being blue, does his body have hemocyanin?” Entrapta rattled off a list of what were, to her, basics.  
Kyle looked more uncertain than ever.  
“I don’t… know any of that.” Kyle answered gently.  
“Ah.” Entrapta replied. “Drat.”  
She turned back to her work and clicked bot #437’s chassis back into place and rapped on it with her knuckles before flicking the power toggle on.  
“Oh well, another time then. Back to the matter at hand.”  
Bot #437 powered up, rotated in place for a moment, and then announced it was activating its targeting system.

\-------

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - DAY 11:

“Ethical dilemma number, uh… sixty-three!” Entrapta draped herself over Emily as she stared up at the big red horde insignia painted onto the doors of Hordak’s lab, speaking into her recorder.  
“I told catra I wouldn’t go into Hordak’s lab,” she began to pace, tapping her forefinger against her lower lip in thought, “but if she never finds out, does it count?”  
“I could just pop in, grab the tool, and pop out! No-one would ever know! But, I would know. Ahh I shouldn’t do it, Or Should I? No, I shouldn’t.” She talked herself in and out of her idea, pacing back and forth, arms crossed.

Emily stared up at her expectantly.

\-------

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - DAY 11 - ENTRY 2:

Entrapta fished the recorder out of a pocket and excitedly spoke into it.  
“Other planets EXIST! Portal technology also exists! Stars exist! SEVERAL THINGS I THOUGHT WERE IMPOSSIBLE EXIST!” She screamed in delight, “What a discovery today, ohhh, I’m so excited I don’t know what to do with myself!” She rocked back and forth on her hair, her mind racing as she theorized on the implications of each new piece of data given to her.  
Hordak stood rigidly, watching her react so vibrantly to his gift of new knowledge with a smug grin on his pallid face.  
She looked up at him, beaming, and offered her recorder.  
“Tell me… everything!” she demanded, her hands curled into tight little fists and pumping anxiously.  
“Princess,” he started slowly, “there is only so much information that you can be expected absorb at one time.” His eyes flicked to the recorder as it neared his face, “and I’m not sure that this is necessary.”  
“Oh, but it is! It’s great for notes. I reference it all the time. And it would fix the problem of information overload, it’s all stored right in here, to pour over later if needed! But I can definitely follow anyway, I’m just really excited. Please?”  
He found himself smiling again.  
“Very well,” he rumbled, and began to explain in more depth.

\-------

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - DAY 11 - ENTRY 3:  
“It’s physically the same as any other star, it only changes its designation to a ‘sun’ based on its close proximity to planets, creating what’s called a solar system,” Hordak explained.  
“Wouldn’t that be extremely hot and radioactive?” Entrapta asked.  
“That depends,” Hordak answered, “but there exists an optimal distance for planets to orbit around their sun, depending on the life there, to receive the perfect amount of heat and light to support life.”  
“Fascinating…” Entrapta crooned.  
Hordak had remained standing more or less where he was, but Entrapta had taken up a place seated on one of the several workspace desks in Hordak’s lab, after pushing some of the machine parts aside, with her legs dangling over the edge. She stared at him with rapt attention the entire time he went over the finer details of portal technology and other planets and stars and suns, occasionally interjecting with further questioning or excited kicks of her feet.  
“And you?” Entrapta asked him.  
“What of me?” Hordak asked her in return.  
“Well, what are you? I’ve never seen anyone on Etheria quite like you before. I’d love to study you.”  
Hordak grunted in surprise.  
“There’s definitely no need for that.”  
Entrapta caught the fingertip of one of her gloves between her teeth and pulled her hand free. She flapped it in the air for a moment, as his red eyes stayed trained on her.  
“Sweaty,” She explained matter-of-factly. “May I see your wrist?”  
Hordak reflexively recoiled.  
“I would prefer you didn’t.” He answered her flatly.  
She shrugged and pulled her other glove off.  
“Then you can just tell me; warm- or cold-blooded? Oh, and what's your diet like? You seem to be at least partly cybernetic, I wonder if you need to eat at all, or if your nutrition comes in other forms.”  
“You will not be studying me.” Hordak answered her with the usual coldness returning to his voice.  
Entrapta frowned at being denied, then met his eyes. Her expression softened as she saw the discomfort on his face and her hand flew to her temple.  
“Oh! I’m being rude! This is very rude of me, isn’t it?!”  
“Yes.” Hordak answered her icily.  
“Ahh! I’m sorry!” She jammed her gloves messily into one of her pockets, and roused herself from the table surface by her hair. Color was quickly rushing to her cheeks. She avoided eye contact, turning her face away from him as she made her way towards an exit.  
“I hope that you um, have a good--” She glanced out one of the tiny slivers of window in this room to see blackness. They’d been talking for a long time.  
“Night!” she finished, and rocketed up an open vent shaft, which Hordak watched with a few disbelieving blinks.  
“Seeya tomorrow probably!” her voice echoed dimly out of the metal vent and rung in the dark lab.  
Hordak looked up after her, not sure what to think.

\-------

FRIGHT ZONE LOG - DAY 12:  
“Hordak!” Entrapta yelled as she plummeted down the vent and into the sanctum, clutching a datapad and a metal cylinder to her chest. She swung the items into the air proudly as she landed.  
“I have something for you!” she announced, then noticed he wasn’t at his work table.  
She picked herself on her hair and made her way to the other side of the lab, sizing up the murky green water of the vitrines and their extensive, patched nets of tubing as she went. She stopped at the portal machine and looked up at it, the power source more stable after her minor revisions but in its current build configuration, definitely not near strong enough if it was expected to move things as far as Hordak had said he could. She grinned.  
“Hordak?” she called again, spinning around to face the wider part of the lab.  
The tall entrance doors slid open and Hordak strode into the sanctum with purpose, his head down in thought.  
“Hordak!” she called again excitedly, raising her arms again.  
The man grunted in surprise and stopped in his tracks, sizing her up. He sighed and continued to walk towards the portal machine, and her.  
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.  
“Looking for you,” she answered brightly. “I brought you something!” She extended both of her arms offering the data pad and metal cylinder.  
“What,” Hordak asked as he made no attempt to retrieve either item, “are these?”  
“Well,” she started, trading the metal cylinder off with a tendril of hair as she raised the data pad to face her and tapped and swiped a few commands into it.  
“I got to thinking about, well, everything. But one of the things I was thinking about was that the power source you built isn’t very strong.”  
Hordak growled. She kept going, flipping the data pad around to show him a map overlaid with a color-coded diagram of some kind.  
“But! I know just how we can make it stronger. I retooled my scanner to have a wider range and picked up a huge signal! There’s potentially an enormous piece of first ones tech in the Northern Reach, we just need to go get it.”  
His hard expression turned to one of curiosity.  
“Interesting. I will grant you access to a transport and supplies for yourself and your squadron to fetch this tech for me.”  
“Great!” Entrapta squealed, jamming the datapad into one of her wide pants pockets. “And!”  
She brought the metal cylinder to between them, unscrewed the top, flipped it to reveal a cup shape, and poured steaming black coffee into it, which she then stretched toward him. She also produced what looked like a very small berry muffin from her other pants pocket.  
“I wasn’t sure if you eat, since you wouldn’t tell me,” she added in a slightly annoyed tone, “but just in case you do, I brought you breakfast.”  
Hordak blinked in confusion as he started at the hot cup of coffee and only slightly smashed muffin offered to him. What an interesting gesture. What was her motive?  
“These aren’t Horde standard rations,” was the only thing he could think to say.  
“They’re not! I had a few kitchen things brought along with the rest of my supplies from Dryl. And then Lonnie and Rogelio caught me trying to sneak into the kitchens to use my muffin mix, and they helped me bake them, which is a relief because I’ve mostly relied on my kitchen staff or robots so I wasn’t entirely sure how to do it, and anyway I thought you might like one!” She beamed.  
He cautiously took the muffin and coffee from her, but still held them stiffly and at a bit of a distance from himself.  
“Oh, and I thought a cup of coffee might make you less grumpy.”  
He exhaled hard through his nose in what may have been either a dry laugh or a snort of annoyance. He himself wasn’t sure. The coffee did smell good.  
“Thank you, princess,” he said, turning to his desk and setting the coffee and muffin down on its surface. “You may leave for the mission to the Northern Reach as soon as the transport is arranged and stocked.”  
She pursed her lips in slight annoyance at still not seeing him eat or drink, but excused herself quickly enough. She used the door this time, but stopped as soon as she crossed the threshold and peered back around the frame, just barely catching him take a sip of the coffee. She beamed, and then was off to tell Catra and Scorpia the good news.

**Author's Note:**

> more entries to come, hopefully soon...? I wrote an "end" piece first but now I have to fill in the gap -_-;


End file.
